A PICTURE FROM LIFE. CHAPTER I. air laughs the Morn, and soft the zephyr blows, Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm. GRAY. OUR HEROINE INTRODUCED ---OUR IDEAS ARE IMPROVED BY REFLECTION AND EDUCATION ----REASONS FOR A YOUNG LADY NOT DECLINING PROPOSALS FOR MARRIAGE. IT was now that season of the year when Peers and Peeresses, Statesmen and their Ladies, gambling Countesses, Knights of the noble and illustrious Orders of the Garter, Thistle, and Bath, Esquires of independent fortunes and their families, according to the arbitrary rules of fashion, are indulging their taste in rounds of elegant dissipation, preferring town to a country residence. For who would be so truly gothic, as to delight in enamelled plains, where nature boasts nothing new, but continues to deck the earth with its favourite colour; who would taste the cooling brook or listen to the warbling chorister, when the Mall is crowded with loungers of the first class, when jellies may be purchased at Mr. Candy's, and Mrs. Billington is allowed to surpass the notes of her whom simple poets call Philomel This reasoning is conclusive, as nature only listens to the feathered songster; but to the charming Anglo-Italian powdered Critics from the pit, Dukes from the boxes, the Chronicadors of taste, fashion and sense, nightly sacrifice the most lavifh incense of adulation. While the countryman scatters seeds for the ensuing harvest, the pickpocket is getting in his; while "The swain responsive to the milk-maid sings" female ballad singers, or hurdy - gurdy players, delight their numerous auditors, these perhaps chanting in bass-voice the manners, dress and person of our formidable enemy, those winding opera airs of the newest fashion, which they assure you upon their honors have not been out above two winters while Nature gives her aid in teaching the promising plant to bud, Art, with a more liberal hand, gives green peas at three guineas a quart. The reader of the least judgment will by this time, probably, have discovered that it was the spring of the year, when Emma Tankerville, in company with her aunt Mrs. Maitland, sate working some flowers, which seemed to rival the richest productions of Flora. They had not yet left the metropolis for the country--indeed their stile of living did not allow them so far to depart from custom as to exchange noise for tranquillity. Although the sun darted its bright effulgence into the parlour, a fashionable fire blazed, and the monotonous sound of chimney sweep broke upon morning slumbers in the flowery month of May. A long silence was thus interrupted by Mrs. Maitland: "You have not, my dear, forgotten Mrs. Mortimer's invitation to her masquerade this evening, and however I may be of opinion that much danger may arise to unguarded persons of our sex, at such places of amusement, yet it is not proper, Emma, that you should be entirely ignorant of fashionable entertainments. No doubt, many good and worthy people, and most genteel families, frequent them. By the bye, your cousin Pellet, and Dr. Dash, his tutor, dine with us to-day, and are to escort us to the masquerade." Emma briefly replied, to attend you, dear aunt.” "I shall be ready "How much happier," Mrs. Maitland continued, "are we than our neighbours on the continent; surely we can never sufficiently thank Providence for such es |